Draft identity assurance principles

Identity assurance is about providing users with a simple, trusted and secure means of accessing public services, so we are working hard to ensure that privacy is at the heart of the service we will provide to users.

The Identity Assurance Privacy and Consumer Advisory Group was established to help the government develop an approach to identity assurance that, amongst other things, ensures users are in control of their information, that information is not centralised and that users have a choice of who provides services on their behalf.

Last year we published the first draft of the PCAG’s principles. The principles set out, in detail, how the government’s identity assurance approach could be configured to meet the privacy and consumer expectations of its users. The government will continue to work closely with PCAG, our private sector partners and users to explore how these principles can be met in practice.

Today we are publishing an updated version of the PCAG’s principles for further feedback and comment. We also plan to arrange a number of workshops to promote public debate and increase awareness of the importance of the issues the principles raise and seek to address.

The Identity Assurance Programme’s aim is to have an agreed, operational set of principles by the end of this year that will support the first iteration of a simple, trusted and secure identity assurance service to be offered to users.